Original Link to Watch: https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/story/taylor-city-council-faces-public-pressure-over-proposed-digital-infrastructure-zone
Author: Jahmal Kennedy
AUSTIN, Texas — For the first time since a petition was created to establish a digital infrastructure zone, the Taylor City Council is set to publicly address where data centers can be built in the city.
A citizen-led ordinance up for discussion — and a potential vote — would ban data centers from being built in existing zoning districts unless the city creates a zoning category specifically for digital infrastructures. Carrie D’Anna with the community organization Halt Taylor Data Centers said the proposal would pause permitting while the city works on new rules.
“We want them to stop permitting so we can create the infrastructure zoning so we can have good guardrails,” D’Anna said.
D’Anna said her group has been seeking support from city leaders as concerns grow about the impact of data centers for about a year now.
“We’ve been asking for zoning, we’ve been asking for help and advocacy from our council members. And we’ve heard pretty much nothing,” she said.
D’Anna said the coalition is pushing for “land and human-centered zoning.”
“That’s what we want to turn the tables,” she said.
Taylor City Council members were not available to speak ahead of the meeting, but the council recently approved a 210-acre data center near Samsung’s semiconductor campus.
Asked what makes that project different from what her group is opposing, D’Anna said residents accepted the Samsung development even if they were not happy about it, but view data centers differently.
“When Samsung came, [citizens] weren’t happy but they took it on, they understood. They thought maybe some office buildings, maybe some kind of commercial here, a data center is a completely different thing when it comes to our health and our environment, our resources,” she said.
Kirk Offel, CEO of Overwatch Mission Critical, said the debate is not necessarily about banning data centers outright, but about where they should go.
“What Taylor is saying is, hey, we’re not saying you can’t build them here. Let’s just make sure we build them in the right places,” Offel said.
Wannie Park, another expert in the data center field, also agrees that, "Proactive community engagement is imperative to continued growth."
Offel also compared big AI data centers and smaller ones, saying "One is like a Honda Civic coming into your town and the other one is like a freight train."
Offel described what he sees as the city’s approach to future projects.
“I think what I see Taylor doing is saying we don’t want any more freight trains here, but we’re going to need these ones that are smaller, more agile, more versatile and have a direct impact on the local community,” he said.
Park, who spent 20 years in energy before founding LG NOVA-backed PADO AI, an energy orchestration platform for data centers, says a pivot can improve a two-pronged approach: optimizing the existing footprint and navigating complicated relocations.
On the first point, she says, "Earning local trust through transparency and extreme efficiency is often more viable than trying to build elsewhere from scratch."
Overall she says, "Ultimately, a successful pivot relies on shifting from a mindset of rapid physical expansion to one centered on resource efficiency, grid cooperation, and proactive community alignment."
D’Anna said if the ordinance is adopted, developers with projects already planned could change course or wait until the city creates a new zoning category.
“They can pivot and build something else on that allowed build or they can wait for our digital infrastructure zoning to happen,” she said.
Tonight's council meeting gets underway at 6 p.m. from City Hall.